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July 29, 2008

TIME OUT: J-Lessons in Spam

Returning from the UNITY journalism conference in Chicago, I checked my e-mail to see if any recruiters or new friends contacted me (recruiters no, friends yes).Like most, I accumulated pages of spam in my absence. Though my Gmail account filters do great work, I checked of my spam folder to if a message ended up there by mistake. That's when I noticed how enticing spam subject lines have become. Of course, there's still the cryptic ASCII-like text for \/!@GЯª and whatnot. Maybe because I'd just lived and breathed journalism for the past week, my editor's eye began to see these subject lines as headlines. I gotta tell you, a few laid off journalists must've become spammers because some of these heads are really good.

Gay Rights Terrorist Kills Eight in Fabulous Bombing

Al Qaeda Reports Declining Revenues in Fiscal '08

McCain Sex Tape Surfaces

Obama Swears to Get Even

FBI Watching Hezbollah in Facebook

Clearly, part of the enticement comes from events that haven't happened -- at least I hope not. A McCain sex tape? Eeesh! Yet these head/subject lines build on topical events. I think there's a journalism lesson to learn from spam, you know, besides it being a future form of employment.

Time Out is a coaching feature of The Latino Reporter highlighting tools for student journalists.